Monsters

Joysie was mid-way to finishing a painting. The priest watched over her shoulder as it progressed into a drawing. On the left side of the frame, a monster hid behind a mask of a teacher, the blackboard behind her. In front of her, a whole class of children sat quietly behind their prescribed desks, in clean, well pressed uniforms, hands together in the prescribed stance of obedience, their eyes wide open, their ears distorted to a slightly larger proportion. The teacher carried a stick.

The large painting had a background. It was a large window showing a panoramic view of the landscape. Students are standing in a line into the mouth of another monster squat in the far background. They exit from the monster’s rear end as cute little baby monsters standing still in a line. The line disappears into the horizon, into the eternity of black empty space. The priest stood before it transfixed. Joysie asked him if she could finish the painting before they made the long trip back to Joysie’s home, the village.

But the priest suspected she was only preparing herself. It would be a journey postponed for too long and the priest perceived her fear and trepidation. But he did not mind staying a few days with this doctor-artist whom he found immediately interesting and, yes, beautiful. It had been too long since he looked at a woman this way and immediately he could not help thinking of sin and what it truly meant to him. Until he came here, he did not have a meaning for loneliness.
But the woman worked incessantly all day. The priest had to cook for the both of them and he was not a good cook, or at least not as good as Neneng. For provisions he was supposed to take the horse to the nearest town which was close to an hour’s ride away. He never rode the horse. He rode his sigbin instead. The ride was that much more comfortable. But the whole experience of it was becoming for him calming, even invigorating. They talked at night over coffee. They sat on folding chairs under the stars. The night was as spectacular here as over the village. By this, he came to a theory of why Joysie had chosen this place to live and do her art. Here, one could grasp how the whole planet stood under just one heaven.

They talked about the village. The priest warned her about certain things she should not do with her family. He used government as an example, citing how government throws money at all its problems and does more harm than good in the end. But she was more curious about how the village looked like now. She compared this to how she remembered it. She asked about old trees, the position of a huge rock which stood near one of the village’s seven springs, each one having a name, Kalabuon, Sandayong, etc. She remembered how they had a name to call this particular rock as kids. They called it kalibutan.

Joysie always put a desert root into the pot while the coffee was boiling. She said it would make them feel better. And indeed, he found himself slowly beginning to look at Joysie as something of a confessor. He talked freely to her. He talked about all the things which bothered him about his priesthood. It was not that his faith in God was waning. But he had contradictions he could not unravel by himself. It helped he had someone to talk to. It helped there was her painting he could use to refer to.

He wondered how he fit into the painting. Was he the monster hiding behind the teacher? The mask? Or merely one of the students sitting obedient behind the desk? Was he the monster out the window eating and defecating children? Or was he merely one of those new-born monsters walking away into the distant darkness still in their immaculately straight line?

Joysie did not have answers for any of his problems. Nor could she really resolve any of the priest’s inner contradictions. She had her own problems. Her own stories to fill the run of the evenings as they inched closer to the next day for them. Between them their stories provided a sense of healing, the easing of private burdens. Sleep came quickly in the desert. They never had to wake at a particular time. They rose only when they felt like it.